Month: March 2009

Spanish Court Weighs Inquiry on Torture for 6 Bush-Era Officials from the NY Times. Judge Baltasar Garzon is at it again. He was the Spanish judge who ordered the arrrest of former Chilean dictator Pinochet. He also has looked into the activities of Basque separatists and the executions of the Franco era. This time, due to the fact that some Spanish citizens or residents were detained at Gauntanamo, Spain can claim some jurisdiction. It will be interesting to see how far this goes.

Staying in Touch Internationally, on the Cheap from the NY Times. Includes some great ideas for using cell phones while traveling internationally. One option it mentions is Google Voice, which has taken over from Grand Central (a service I signed up for early on but never followed through on). This could really make things easy for those of us who travel abroad.

In my Africa in World Politics class this week, I’ve been talking about the role of African states in global economic governance. This has been a focus of my own research, stressing the important roles coalitions can play, but how those roles are strongly influenced by the institutional and strategic environments that states operate in. At the World Bank or IMF, African coalitions tend to have no impact due at least partly to the power and voting structure of those institutions. At the WTO, coalitions have had major impacts in negotiations (the Cairns Group in the Uruguay Round, the “Cotton Four” group of African countries more recently).

There is some hope that African issues will have a place on the agenda at the G20 meeting. But as Kofi Annan argues in a guest column on AllAfrica.com, Africa needs to have more systematic representation at the G20 if the G20 is going to be an important decision-making forum. Also, African states need to continue their hard lobbying for greater voice at the IMF and World Bank, especially given the important role the IMF plays in developing the norms of the global financial system. My suggestion would be that African states concentrate on encouraging decision-making rules that favor coalitional behavior. If the lessons of the WTO tell us anything, it is that some institutional settings provide greater scope for developing country influence than others.

The BBC (see below) is reporting that the South African government may be bowing to pressure from China in its decision to block the Dalai Lama’s entry. If true (and what other reason could there be?), it is yet another signal that doing business with China carries its own conditions. And if South Africa cannot stand up to such pressures, what other African states can?

On Friday, Johnnie Carson became Obama’s official nominee for US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs at the State Department (via allAfrica.com). A number of observers have worried about how long it took him to name someone to this post, that it is an indication of Africa’s low priority in the Obama administration. But the choice itself demonstrates that Obama has decided to select someone with a long diplomatic history with the the continent (beginning as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania and including ambassadorships to Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda).

What, exactly, does Carson’s nomination signal? At least one blogger has mused that Carson could be tough on Museveni in Uganda, perhaps promoting a pro-democracy agenda there. Yet another observer seems concerned that the choice signals a lack of intention on the part of the Obama administration to effectively deal with the crisis in the DRC.

Carson seems to me to be a strong choice. He has great experience with the continent and will likely be respected by most African leaders. But he is also a safe choice. It is unclear that the Obama administration is making any significant move to change US policy in the region. It would be nice, for instance, if we saw (as one of the observers mentioned above has opined) a special envoy for the crisis in the DRC.

The Monkey Cage, a favorite blog of mine, has posted an important ranking of colleges from Surfline (via Inside HigerEd) based on their appeal to surfers. I’m happy to see my undergrad institution, UC San Diego, is at the top. I never was a surfer (unless a couple tries counts), but I can attest to the fact that the beaches there were fantastic. Now that I’m out East, I suppose I’ll have to check out the nearby spots, especially since the University of Rhode Island made #7 on their list.

“IMF finally calls it – the world economy will shrink in 2009, and developing countries are hit harder than we thought

Every revision of global growth predictions has been heading towards zero, and now the IMF, in its report to the G20 finance ministers’ meeting last weekend, has taken the next step. It predicts the world economy will shrink in 2009, (by minus 0.5-1%) for the first time in 60 years. It’s pretty safe to assume that this won’t be the last downward move.

Take a look at the chart. Developing country growth is the only positive bar left (though well below the rate of population growth), but it was the largest downward revision in the forecast, marking the increasingly rapid contagion via finance, trade, remittances, commodity prices etc. In terms of the difference between growth in 08 and 09 only Japan takes a bigger hit than the developing world.”

The BBC and others have been reporting over the past day or so that the African Union has suspended Madagascar’s membership since the coup earlier this week. This echoes the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) decision not to recognize the new “interim” president, Andry Rajoelina.

Alistair Thomson, at Reuter’s Blogs, notes that between starting in 2005, there was a period of three years without coups in Africa, a trend that changed in 2008. I believe he is likely referring to a period bookended by the bloodless coup in Maurtiania in August of 2005 and the more recent coup there in August of 2008. However, the relevance of that stastic is probably undermined by attempted coups during this period (alleged attempts in Cote d’Ivoire and the Gambia, for instance) and major election fiascoes in places like Kenya and Zimbabwe. Nonetheless, it is clear that 2008 and 2009 (so far) have not been great years for Africa’s political systems.

The consequences of this? Alistair rightly mentions that the recent spate of political instability does not help Africa’s investment climate.

Will this change? Alistair also rightly notes that the recent financial crises are only likely to increase the pressures current governments face and the disatisfaction of opposition groups within the countries. And while the AU is clearly on the right side in condemning the coup, its current leader, Gaddafi, is unlikely to promote the kind of democratic stability in Africa most Western observers would like to see. And we can wonder about the future of African leadership on these issues. Mbeki, for all his faults, could at least be credited with having a vision for responsible African leadership on the continent, but he is no longer in a position to promote his African Renaissance.

Duncan Green has a favorable early review of the new World Bank study, The Moving Out of Poverty Study. More about the book can be found on the World Bank’s website. According to the website it is due to be released sometime this month and is available for pre-order.